An embarrasment of riches

Keith Vaz has been widely pilloried in recent months as a parliamentary investigation into his affairs detailed his ownership of a string of homes. But why are Labour MPs so susceptible to these housing 'scandals'? And why do we care what properties they own? Andy McSmith reports on wealth, power, pride and prejudice

Home alone: Keith Vaz makes his speech to the Commons on 13th February, after being suspended for a month

MINISTERS in this New Labour government seem to run into a lot of difficulties over where they live. Since taking power in 1997, there have been so many outcries about where ministers choose to reside, the homes they own and how they came to buy them that it is almost as if property transactions are doing for Labour what the Paris Ritz did for the Conservatives.

The latest in a long line of embarrassments is Keith Vaz, who three days ago was suspended from Parliament for a month after the publication of Elizabeth Filkin's damning report on his conduct. An earlier investigation by Mrs Filkin, the departing Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, generated immense press interest in Mr Vaz's business affairs and home-ownership.

It was revealed that he owned two, adjoining, semi-detached houses in his Leicester East constituency, which are thought to be worth £55,000 each, a flat in Kennington, south London, worth about £300,000, and a flat in Pimlico, close to Westminster, worth about the same. He and his wife Maria, a solicitor, had also bought a four-bedroom, detached house in Stanmore, Middlesex, now thought to be worth about £400,000. A few months ago, Mr Vaz, his wife, and his mother were also negotiating to buy a London townhouse for £900,000.

As the details of this portfolio emerged, Mr Vaz's career drowned under a tidal wave of speculation about how he could have made so much money; an MP's annual salary was just £18,500 when he entered Parliament in 1987 and although it now stands at £51,800, Mr Vaz had collected the extra ministerial allowance, which would bring him up to £82,700, for only 18 months.

Under this pressure, he found it difficult to do his job as Minister for Europe. He fell ill and resigned after the election. Since returning to Parliament last summer, he has, according to Mrs Filkin, refused to co-operate with her inquiry and subsequently been found to have committed "serious breaches" of the MPs' code of conduct.

Mr Vaz has been unrepentant, refusing to divulge the details of his multiple home-ownership. The seeds of the scandal were sown after it emerged that he had transferred the Kennington flat into his mother's name before replying to questions on how many properties he owned.

Furthermore, that flat and his Stanmore home appeared to have been occupied by people other than the Vaz family for several years although no rental income was declared in the MPs' register of interests. Nevertheless, Mr Vaz has struck a curiously uncowed pose since her findings were made public, launching an outspoken attack on the day and maintaining to the House that he had co-operated with her investigation "in every possible way".

It is this lack of humility which seems to be at the core of New Labour's property PR problems. Take Shaun Woodward, the Labour MP for St Helens. Since the former Conservative MP defected to Labour, we have heard endlessly about his £8 million Oxfordshire mansion, Sarsden Hall, and his £4 million Kensington townhouse. Both were bought with money accrued by Mr Woodward when he married Camilla Sainsbury and the London property was shared with Peter Mandelson while he was between homes.

When Mr Woodward decided to sell his London home, the column writers sharpened their pencils and fell about with glee, for his choice was not a property on a more modest scale, but four staggeringly ostentatious flats across the capital including a £3.2 million penthouse overlooking the Houses of Parliament. "These homes are all for the private use of my family and they are our private business," Mr Woodward declared. "We are selling our house in Queen Anne's Gate and it is nobody's business where we now choose to live."

And whereas newly elected MPs are normally praised if they go to the expense of buying themselves a home in their constituency, Mr Woodward's acquisition of a £56,000, red-brick house overlooking a glassworks chimney in St Helens brought him nothing but ridicule, even before it was revealed he had never even bothered to visit it. He is now understood to be lavishing a further £120,000 on the place to make it meet his needs.

Mr Woodward's case seems to suggest that double standards apply: it seems acceptable for Conservative politicians to own property, but not for Labour ones. We seldom heard, for example, about the enormous wealth of Sir Tim Sainsbury when he was a Tory minister. Similarly, little was said about the great wealth that Shaun Woodward acquired when he married Sir Tim's daughter - at least, not while Mr Woodward was a Conservative MP. All that changed when he switched sides.

When Mr and Mrs Thatcher bought a house in Dulwich for £400,000 in 1985, then resold it seven years later for a reputed £595,000 without ever having lived in it, people were interested, but not scandalised. Tony and Cherie Blair, by contrast, sold their Islington house as soon as they had moved into Downing Street seemingly to avoid any outcry - a shrewd but very expensive decision because, one day, the couple will have to buy back into the London property market. Mrs Blair is said by friends to resent deeply the financial loss.

Why, though, should these domestic arrangements be so fraught with political risks? Labour politicians appear much more trouble-prone than Tories when it comes to property. When the Blairs took their holidays in a Tuscan villa owned by Geoffrey Robinson, they ran into so much criticism that they now take pains to pay in full for their holidays. Yet Margaret Thatcher was able to borrow the late Woodrow Wyatt's Tuscan villa without any such fuss, even though she appointed Lord Wyatt to a very well paid post as chairman of the Tote.

The problem is that such behaviour does somehow seem worse among Labour MPs. The example that everyone remembers is Peter Mandelson's former residence in Notting Hill, purchased with the help of a secret loan of £373,000 from his colleague Geoffrey Robinson. The failure to declare his indebtedness to someone whose business activities were then investigated by the very department which Mr Mandelson headed caused his first resignation from the Cabinet.

Mr Mandelson is not the only one to have found that property ownership can turn into a form of political negative equity. Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, is also a multiple home-owner: together with his wife, he has at least eight properties. In his case, there is no mystery about why he can afford them, because his wife is wealthy. He says there is no legitimate public interest in how the family invests its money.

Some critics, however, have accused him of hypocrisy because of the suggestion he made at the Labour conference two years ago that the rights of those able to buy second homes should be curtailed where they interfered with the rights of poor people to buy low-cost homes locally. The idea was never government policy.

John Prescott also ran into trouble over a flat in Clapham, south London, which he has rented for decades. He had kept it on after he acquired two grace-and-favour residences as Deputy Prime Minister. In the meantime, he allowed his son to use it. This became controversial while Mr Prescott was in charge of transport, because the flat is owned by a transport union and leased at below market rent. However, he was cleared by a parliamentary inquiry and has since bought the flat, earning himself the nickname "Four Pads".

Chancellor Gordon Brown's reputation has remained relatively untarnished by sleaze while in government, but he was shown up as having found a London flat at a knock-down price - again with help from the ever-accommodating Geoffrey Robinson, who served in Mr Brown's Treasury with the somewhat suggestive title of Paymaster General. Mr Brown also used to borrow Mr Robinson's seaside flat in Cannes.

The post of Lord Chancellor comes with a very desirable official residence in the Palace of Westminster, designed by Augustus Pugin, so, for Lord Irvine, the embarrassment was not where he lived, but what he put in it. This included a £14,000 dining-table, eight mirrors costing a total of £32,768, and £57,233 worth of handcrafted wallpaper - all at public expense.

In April 1998, when the £590,000 worth of restoration and refurbishment was complete, the residence was opened to selected visitors. One of them, Stephen Bayley, remarked: "Pugin himself would have deplored the pompous extravagance of Irvine's restoration. You can pay your respects to Pugin without this gormless interpretation."

So is it simply unfair that Labour MPs run into such dreadful difficulties over their property affairs or do they bring the trouble on themselves through sheepishness about their arrangements? Whether we are talking about the former First Minister of Scotland, Henry McLeish's sub-letting of his Edinburgh offices, Peter Mandelson's home loan or Keith Vaz's many properties, a secrecy seems to surround them. A deeper explanation may be that Woodward, Meacher, Mandelson, Vaz and the rest are victims of changing times.

During the property boom of the 1980s, the public objected less than it does now to conspicuous wealth. Then it seemed that almost everyone would have a chance to join in. Now, as more and more people are unable to scramble on to the property ladder, many voters are more inclined to empathise with words written by a rising politician nearly 20 years ago: "Housing is not, or should not be, a status symbol, an object of conspicuous consumption, or a source of market power or wealth. It is a place where individuals and families should be able to live and inter-relate in mutual happiness. Too many people have second homes or too large homes for their needs, while too many others are homeless or overcrowded or even lacking basic facilities."

Those noble sentiments appear in a book called Socialism with a Human Face, by Michael Meacher. The change in mood makes what Mr Meacher said then more easily acceptable than what he does now, and has brought about a shift in the balance of political power. The Labour Party has gained from this and if a few well-off Labour politicians have suffered consequent embarrassment, they cannot really complain.

Andy McSmith is chief political correspondent of 'The Daily Telegraph'. His first novel, 'Innocent in the House', is published by Verso (£13).